Friday, September 16, 2011

Kids never fail to surprise me.

Today was one of those horrible wet days, even worse when you teach in a school that has no PE hall. The kids....and me, have to stay in the classroom at breaktime. Everyone is climbing the walls come eleven o' clock.
At breaktime, the kids had "Golden Time".A euphanism for "Keep yourself busy and don't bother me."
They were all busily playing draughts, reading library books, gluing glitter and themselves onto pieces of card. I saw three of the sixth class boys huddled around a book, totally engrossed in it.
Being the suspicious type I made my way over to them. What I encountered rooted me to the spot. I never in my wildest dreams thought that 12 year olds would be reading this.

They were spending their "Golden Time" working through........Maths Wise: Junior Cert Maths
Yes, you've read right. Primary school kids completing secondary school work.
They looked up at me expectantly and I just said
"Excellent. Well done"
and made my escape before they asked me how to do something!

I was very good at Maths in my day! But as Jane Fonda used to advocate
"Use it or lose it".
I can add, subtract, multiply and divide at top speed, but please don't ask me trigonometry, calculus or theorems!

Thankfully the sun came out for 12.30 break and they rushed out to the playground to be kids again!